Original scientific paper
Devil in Wolf’s Clothing: Variations on the Theme of “Speak of the Wolf / Devil and He Appears”
József Attila Balázsi
Elisabeth Piirainen
Abstract
The proverb Speak of the wolf (or: of the devil) and he will appear leads back to early folk belief that uttering the name of a demon could serve to summon it. Correspondences of the proverb exist in a large variety of languages in an abundant morpho-syntactic and lexical variability. Especially the parallelism of WOLF and DEVIL raises questions that can be answered only within a wide range of cultural contexts such as folklore, mythology, symbolism, tabooing of names, Christian exegesis, fairy tales and literature, among other things.
Keywords
concepts of WOLF and DEVIL; etymology; folk belief; symbolism; taboos; widespread proverb type
Hrčak ID:
278303
URI
Publication date:
31.8.2016.
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